History Shattered

Anomaly: 1. Irregularity: something that deviates from the norm or from expectations. 2. Peculiarity: something strange and difficult to identify or classify -- Bing Dictionary

Synonyms: irregularity, incongruity, difference, variance, glitch, abnormality

Singularity: an event wherein the laws of physics break down. Specifically, one quantity approaches infinity while another quantity approaches zero. Singularities occur in the field of quantum physics and include the Big Bang, black holes and wormholes as examples. – www.physlink.com

The scientists working with Pat’s team poured into the meeting room where Monica’s group was already gathered. The anticipation was ripe in the air. For Monica to interrupt both groups’ discussions could only mean that some significant development had occurred. She had lowered the room’s giant screen and turned on the projection unit connected to the facility’s computer network. Some of the world’s brightest scientific minds sat watching the projector go through its series of wake-up messages with childlike fascination. Finally ready to show them something, the group was momentarily disappointed when the large screen became filled with the image of wavy snow. Only Monica and Colonel James realized what the image really was. The rest of the group remained restless and expectant. Monica held up a hand, requesting silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what you see on the screen is neither static, nor interference. It also isn’t a lack of signal. What you’re looking at is the image of what is actually going on inside Station 28. Folks, that is some kind of field…, likely energy-related and a byproduct of our particle collision. It would seem that our little lead-encased observation station is functioning as quite the effective container for whatever that is. Our mission of the moment has now changed. We need to figure out what that is, what is happening to it, in it, and around it, and then we need to figure out what that means to this facility, this project, to all of us, and finally, to Tyler.”

She paused for several moments, allowing the assemblage to absorb the weight of her words and to begin assimilating what the image on the screen might be suggesting. When she next spoke, Monica had already shifted gears.

“Colonel James’ communications team has re-established both audio and video feeds from Station 28 and is working on the remainder of the communications and telemetry feeds. It is estimated that we should have full access to data coming from 28 within the next fifteen minutes.”

She spotted Pat, sitting in the middle of his team, and made eye contact with the man.

“Pat, I don’t want you abandoning your work regarding the electromagnets. We might need whatever you can come up with to control this if it begins reversing its flow out of 28. But if there’s something your group is focused on that might help us do a better job of figuring out exactly what we’re looking at, then I think that’s a rabbit trail worth running down, at least in the short term. Does that make sense to you?”

All the heads in the room turned to see Pat nod his head in agreement. Monica readdressed the entire group a final time.

“OK, these images should be available in the control room and wherever else we have monitoring equipment that would normally get a feed from any of the remote stations. Once again, there are no stupid theories. We’re all in uncharted waters. Let’s figure this thing out, people…, and sooner is much better than later. That’s it…, let’s go! Wait, Colonel James, do you have anything to add?”

Mike addressed the group from his standing position in the back of the large room. He used his military parade ground voice. A microphone would’ve been superfluous.

“Yes, thanks, Director Ray. I know how curious you scientific types are. I don’t want anybody getting the bright idea that it would be cool for you to breach the perimeter of Station 28. Just so we’re all clear…, I will be dispatching a reconnaissance team following strict military protocols to investigate as soon as all of you give us an indication it is safe to do so. You do your jobs so we can do ours. I just wanna make sure nobody goes rogue on this thing. I’m happy to leave the science to you, and I want to get Tyler out of there as badly as any of you. Work the problem so we can do just that.”

He made eye contact with Monica as he uttered the last couple of sentences, and then nodded to indicate he was finished.

“Alright…, you heard the man. Let’s get busy!”

~~~~o~~~~

Tyler awakened with a start and glanced at his surroundings, aware that sunlight was penetrating the surrounding space from somewhere. How could that be? PD’s dormitory facilities were underground. He had a momentary sense of panic. He was not waking up in bed next to Monica. Where was he? He looked downward to see that he was still wearing the jeans and t-shirt he had chosen as attire for yesterday’s test. Gradually, the familiarity of his current surroundings crept back into his consciousness. He was still at the inn from his delusion. He was once again in Caffa in fourteenth century Crimea. Or more precisely, he was still here. His mind attempted to process this realization. Well, that pretty much eliminates a bacon and egg breakfast sandwich and a double soy latte this morning. He threw the rough blanket to the side and stood up slowly. Why did he hurt so badly in a fucking delusion? The body aches often associated with the Bird Flu were most definitely screaming their presence. Today wasn’t going to be a pleasant day from a health perspective. Tyler was still blissfully unaware exactly how prophetic that thought would turn out to be.

The inn was quiet. No one else seemed to be in the great room, and he couldn’t hear another sound. Perhaps this was his delusion’s way of telling him it was time to move along. He tried to apply a bit of logic to this problem. Perhaps the best way to exit this delusion would be to return to the point where it began. That seemed to be more logical than any other strategy his feverish mind could come up with. He opened the door to the inn. The cool air from the outdoors came rushing toward him. The cool breeze felt momentarily invigorating. He started walking back toward the gate he had entered Caffa through the previous afternoon. This historical delusion had been both educational and entertaining, but it was time to leave the birthplace of The Black Death in the proverbial rear view mirror.

He approached the gate to see one of the guards who had allowed him to enter Caffa the previous afternoon. The soldier was stationed atop the wall this morning with another guard Tyler did not recognize. A third guard, this one stationed on the ground, was one of the surgical patients from his impromptu operating suite at the inn. Both men who had met him previously greeted him warmly and treated him with the deference they would reserve for the newest local celebrity. They seemed disappointed to learn he was leaving, but he made an excuse about needing to return home and promised to return even though he believed the statement to be a lie. His brief explanation seemed to satisfy them. The gate was opened, and Tyler slipped outside Caffa’s protective wall. He began plodding slowly and painfully down the dirt road, walking toward what he hoped would be the end to this delusion.

The walk away from Caffa was mostly uphill for the first three quarters of a mile, and Tyler felt his strength rapidly ebbing. He was reduced to a survival shuffle on the remaining uphill portions of his short trek and considered turning back toward Caffa more than once. Had he not still been clinging to the notion that he was in the midst of a delusion he likely would have. Only his belief that he would soon be transported back to a conscious state, either in his dormitory bed or into his console seat inside Station 28, kept him trudging forward. Finally, he recognized the final hill to be crested, and knowing the finish to his journey was rapidly approaching gave him the emotional lift needed to cover the final half-mile.

He knew he was about in the right spot, give or take twenty feet. The dirt road looked pretty nondescript, almost as if it could’ve been pulled from any of hundreds of random rustic scenes. He walked a little further down the road. The unmistakable markings in the dirt of something skidding to a stop on the road were there. What looked to be the partial imprint in the dirt of the sole of a tennis shoe was visible in the loose dirt. Was that his print? Had he skidded somehow onto the road? Nobody else in this delusion was wearing Converse All-Star basketball shoes. After all, this was Crimea in 1346 A.D. Even Converse wasn’t that old school. He had to have been the person to leave those marks. Judging from the direction, they appeared to have emanated from a depression to the left of the road.

He eased over near the road’s edge and looked downward. Tyler was looking at what was essentially a shallow cave, or perhaps it could more accurately be described as a deep depression. It looked to be lined on all sides with rock walls. It looked solid, like it should be expected to be filled with water during a hard rain. It appeared more than a dozen feet deep and perhaps just over twenty-five or thirty feet in length. The hole itself wasn’t what captured Tyler’s attention, however. His attention was focused upon the grayish opaque pulsating mass inside the depression. It looked as if it filled about two-thirds of the space below. He wasn’t sure he could consider it a mass. It didn’t appear to be solid, but then, it didn’t look like a cloud either. Had that been what transported him to this place and time? There didn’t appear to be any other possible explanations. Whatever this thing was, it had been responsible for one of Monica’s theoretical wormhole phenomena, at least inside this delusion. Was that what he was staring at? …a wormhole, or at least the entrance to one?

There was really only one way to find out. He was either still in the midst of a delusion or had already survived an encounter with this wormhole. He was miles from the nearest settlement in the middle of a fourteenth century Crimean countryside. He had no water, food or medications. It seemed as if he had little to fear from exploring the phenomenon before him. He scrambled down the rocky embankment, and stood, brushing the loose bits of dust from his hands as he stood up. The pulsating field was less than six feet from him. He could feel the waves of power dancing on his skin. He took a step forward. The hair on Tyler’s arms was now standing straight out, responding to the static electric charge in the surrounding air. He took another step forward and extended a hand into the pulsating gray cloud. The pull was immediate, but not overpowering. It was drawing him into the energy field. He had the sensation that he could’ve resisted it if he had so chosen, but he allowed himself to be pulled inside. He hadn’t taken another step, but somehow the energy had now surrounded him, and he was now enveloped in a cloud of pulsating, powerful grayness.

The sensation of gravity was gone. He felt somehow adrift, floating through the air. Later he would realize that he had been experiencing the space-time conundrum of a wormhole, travelling in an instant across space and through centuries, and while he had a general sense of movement, it was the lack of gravity that made the strongest impression. He seemed to be floating toward the far end of the cloudy mass of energy. Nothing was required of him. He was supplying none of the propulsion. It was as if the energy field was driving him from one end to the other on its own. It was almost like a tide which was inexorably pushing him in a specific direction. He had only a moment to wonder if it was an ebb and flow within this wormhole which had taken him to Caffa and was now sending him to a new destination, or possibly back from whence he came.

Tyler blinked as a flash of light seemed to announce his arrival at the far end of the energy field. Gravity returned with a vengeance, and he felt himself falling. The drop wasn’t far, perhaps five or six feet, but it had been unexpected. Tyler’s head impacted with the ceramic tile floor of Station 28’s monitoring room. He had a vague, momentary glint of recognition, as the image of his monitoring perch within the tunnels of PD flashed before his eyes for just an instant before the impact of his head on the floor rendered him unconscious. He had just enough time to wonder if his delusion had ended before the world went dark.

~~~~o~~~~

Although the audio feed from Station 28 had also been restored, there was nothing but static coming from the headset microphone. Of greater interest to the scientists was the restoration of the data stream coming from the site. It had once again become functional thanks to the efforts of Colonel James’ technical squad. The energy level within the bunker-like station was still impossibly high, but there was an indication that it was dissipating. One of Monica’s colleagues performed a quick extrapolation and estimated that if the current bleed of energy continued to accelerate as appeared to be happening at the moment, then energy levels within Station 28 could return to normal within another three or four hours.

Monica glanced at her watch. It had been just under three hours since the particle collision had gone awry. Another three or four hours before energy levels within Station 28 would be considered safe to allow for entry would mean that Tyler would’ve been exposed to whatever this phenomenon was for at least six or seven hours before any rescue effort could be attempted. Even then, the first to enter the facility would be military personnel, and they would necessarily proceed with an abundance of caution. There were several deadly viruses inside Station 28, and any chance of contaminating the facility outside of the confines of that station could not be allowed. Her scientists and the facility’s medical personnel would be forced to wait their turn. Whatever was going on within the bunker’s walls was preventing Tyler from communicating with them. How would such a surge of energy have affected him? There had been no significant radioactivity entering the bunker according to all their sensors. That was a cause for hope. Similarly, the temperature readings coming from within the station were elevated, but not hot enough to cook someone. Monica chose to remain cautiously optimistic that whatever else the energy field might be, it wouldn’t do harm to Tyler.

The discussion largely centered around speculation regarding the mysterious cloud-like energy field which was still pulsating in the video monitors. The readings coming from within Station 28 could not be considered completely reliable. Only within the past few minutes had readings from within the bunker begun to stabilize. Prior to that moment, there had been some wild fluctuations. Readings indicating human presence within the facility had fluctuated between zero and hundreds when everyone knew that only Tyler was within the station. Clearly, the energy cloud was affecting the equipment. Now, the readings had settled on showing the presence of just a single human within the facility, and that human appeared to be alive, but unmoving. It seemed likely that Tyler was at best unconscious and possibly critically injured, but at least he was alive…, for now.

They decided to refer to the surge of energy as ‘the anomaly’. It was easier if everyone referred to it by the same moniker and didn’t pause with uncertainty each time they attempted to refer to it. As the clock moved forward another hour, the anomaly had dissipated enough so that bits of the interior of Station 28 were now visible around the edges of the images showing on the monitors. The scientific juices had been flowing in the meeting room. Theories were being fired from everyone with a physics or electromagnetics background. Even a couple of cosmologists were offering some notions likening the anomaly to a mini-Big Bang type event with the universe being confined to the interior of Station 28. They faced a reality in which they now had huge volumes of data streaming in, but it was impossible to classify the behavior of the energy. Everyone was certain that a new energy-related event had occurred, and the notion of a wormhole’s creation was mentioned as one of the possibilities. But in the end, they were all just throwing ideas against the wall in the hopes that one might stick.

Almost exactly eighty minutes after she had left him, Colonel James reappeared in the meeting room. He had made this visit himself instead of sending one of his men to retrieve her. Monica knew enough of the military man’s behavior to know that whatever he intended to communicate must be pretty serious if he was delivering the information in person. He motioned with his head that he wished for her to move away from the table the group was huddled around; that he wished to speak only to her at this point. Monica couldn’t decide if that meant it was likely to be good or bad news he had to offer. She decided not to guess since she’d know that answer in a matter of seconds.

“What is it Mike?”

“We’ve got Tyler on the headset.”

“You what?”

She knew he wasn’t kidding, and she hadn’t failed to hear or understand his words. The response had just come out of her mouth reflexively. She had also said it in a much louder voice than she should have. Several heads turned in their direction. She waved a dismissive hand at the table, urging the team of scientists to resume their discussion.

“He’s asking for you. Why don’t you follow me? We have the audio feed coming only into our monitoring room right now. We’ve been making a contact attempt into Station 28 every five minutes since we restored communications capability. Five minutes ago we finally got a response. I don’t know if the energy level has subsided enough now for the comm channels to have cleared or what? Maybe you can help us with that one. Anyway…, why don’t you follow me?”

Her legs felt a little wobbly as she followed him down the corridor into the military compound. This was wonderful news. Tyler was not only alive, but he was able to communicate. Surely Mike would’ve told her if something was wrong. He had made no such indication. She made her way into the monitoring room and the soldier at the console handed her a headset.

Mike spoke to her, as Monica put the headset on. “It’s a closed channel between us and Station 28. There’s no chatter going to either the Control Room or the other stations. It’ll just be you talking to Tyler.”

Monica nodded her understanding. “Tyler, can you hear me?”

“Monica, is that you?”

The voice sounded weak. The communications channel might not be totally clear. It might also be an indication that Tyler had been affected by the anomaly.

“Yes, it’s me. Can you tell me your status?”

“I think I’ve been unconscious for a little while. I seem to remember falling, and my head hurts like a sonovabitch.”

“Do you think you’ve been injured in any way…, besides banging your head, I mean? There’s some kind of energy anomaly that has manifested inside Station 28 as a result of the particle collision. We’ve all been trying to figure out what happened, but until just a little while ago, we couldn’t even establish a communication link with you. Whatever’s going on in there is like nothing anyone’s ever seen before.”

“I’m not sure how to answer, Monica. I’ve still got the flu. I’ve got aches all over the place, and I know I have a fever. All of that could be just flu symptoms, but I guess they could also be reactions to whatever your energy event is. I think I’ve been experiencing some kind of delusion. If you were to ask me what’s been going on since the test, I’d be telling you a story of performing surgery in a small town in Crimea in the fourteenth century.”

“Well, it definitely sounds like you’ve been concussed, which would seem quite possible given the waves of energy which collided inside your station. It’s great to hear your voice. We were all terribly worried about you.”

“It’d take more than one of your little wormholes to get rid of me.”

“Why did you say wormhole?”

“Because that’s what this energy field behaved like in my delusion…, or at least what I think a wormhole might behave like based on how you’ve described it to me.”

“Interesting… I guess I shouldn’t assume you’re tuning me out when I go on one of my physics rants. Tyler, the energy level continues to drop inside 28, but I think it’s gonna be at least a couple more hours before we can get to you. Are you OK for a little longer?”

“I’ll be fine. I think I’ll try to find a couple of aspirin for this fever, a bottle of water, and then I want to start checking on some of my experiments. It’s been a crazy coupla days.”

“What do you mean ‘couple of days’?”

“The two days since the test. I guess it’s really been more like a day-and-a-half.”

“Tyler, the test happened just a little over four hours ago.”

“Really? Wow…, that just makes that wormhole thing seem even cooler!”